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Daily Delight

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Jonah was late. From going down to Joppa, then getting on the boat to head for Tarshish, to the three days he sat in the great fish, to the time it took for him to get from the beach to the city, Jonah didn’t arrive in Nineveh as soon as he could have. In Daniel 10, the angel says that he was delayed from answering Daniel’s prayer because he had to fight with the demon of Persia for 21 days.

There’s that special person you pray for…that husband or wife, that father or mother, that brother or sister, that dear friend…they burden your heart, and you pray for their eyes to see, for their heart to know about God’s truth. What if someone was praying for someone in Nineveh? And they wondered when God would answer their prayers? Was someone’s prayers delayed because of Jonah? Take heart, friend. Keep praying. Repentance still came to Nineveh, and the angel still made it to Daniel. It may be that the one on their way to your loved one is struggling, wrestling. I challenge you: don’t just pray for your loved one, pray for the messenger. "Then my enemies will turn back when I call for help. By this I will know that God is for me," (Psalms 56:9, KJV).

Maybe you are the messenger for someone else’s loved one…what if Jonah had been even more stubborn and never gone to Nineveh? What if you are just too tired, too busy, too giddy, too selfish that day to tell someone about Jesus? Whose prayers are you passing by? Who has been praying over that person? Don’t let someone’s prayers be delayed until God can find someone else because you don’t feel like sharing.

Your love for that person should be as great as the one who’s praying for them. In Jonah 4, Jonah gets angry over Nineveh’s repentance and says that God’s mercy was the whole reason he hadn’t wanted to come! He thought they deserved punishment and torment. Don’t forego telling someone because of your own judgment on them.

Liz Rigby≫ ≫ Liz clutches at whatever writing time she can get when she's not cleaning, laundering, cooking, homeschooling, and otherwise taking care of the love of her life and their three boys. To offset the busy stress of life, Liz loves nothing better than either writing, painting, creating music, or spending time with friends. Having graduated from Bible college and passed through the baby-making phase, Liz is eager for the next step and ministry that God has for her, and is excited to have a part in the Daughter of Delight team, where she hopes her words will point others to His exquisite glory.